Miso maple banana bread and a birthday high tea

The story of this Maple miso banana bread starts in my humble kitchen a couple of months ago when we googled banana bread with miso and the recipe we found ends being belle of the ball in a birthday high tea at my parents place.  Well not quite the star but definitely a fine addition.  Is there anything that miso can't improve!

After we found the recipe, Sylvia made the banana bread in November and December and both times we loved it.  We raved about it so much that we decided to take it to my mum's birthday high tea last weekend.  After a busy week, it was made late at night by me.  

I was interested to see that the liquid ingredients were over twice as much volume as the flour.  No wonder it was so soft and tender.  This might also be why it worked so well with wholemeal flour. I mashed the banana with the miso and maple syrup but next time I would wait until the banana and miso were mashed to add it with the other liquids.

The cake came out of the oven about 1am.  I really was in night owl mode that night!  Then I left the cake out overnight covered by a tea towel.  In the morning I made the glaze and found a jar to transport it to my parents' house with the cake.  Fresh icing seemed the best option when the alternative was travelling in the boot of a hot car.  

I arrived an hour or two before the high tea at my parents' house.  Firstly I added cards from Sylvia and me to the display under the gorgeous flowers from my aunts and uncles.  The house was looking lovely with lots of vases of flowers.  I also brought down a batch of vegetarian sausage rolls for the high tea.

Once I arrived I iced the banana cake with glaze.  (It had set a bit during the trip so I microwaved it for 10-20 seconds to make it easier to spread.)  While it is intended to be a loaf I made it in  20 x 20cm square cake tin so it was not as high.  I sliced the cake into small squares and trimmed off the edges to make it fit with the high tea theme. 

Then my cake found a place on the table with the other food that was already baked by my mum and also some delicate cucumber and cheese sandwiches that my sister put together.  

I placed a candy star on each piece of cake to give it some sparkle.  While the little stars made the cake sparkle, it looked great on the platter with some flower arrangement by my brother's girlfriend. 

 

She also made the platter of dips, crudites, nuts and meat. (The ingredients were my younger sister's contribution to the high tea but my brother's girlfriend kindly put them together because Fran was busy with work the two days before).  They looked really beautiful with some flowers added.    

She also decorated the black forest cake that my my made.  It looked amazing with colourful flowers from my mum's garden.  Imagine the dishes I could garnish if only I had a garden as resplendent and big as my mum and skill in presenting food like my brother's girlfriend.  My small contribution to the decorations were some little pansies (johnny jump-ups) from my garden. 

By now everyone was arriving, including their dogs.  The table was getting fuller and fuller with all the food brought along by members of my family.  My aunt even cooked up some garlic prawns which were not a traditional high tea addition but were very popular.  We also had lots of other savoury food: finger sandwiches, cheese and crackers, the crudites and dips, nuts, bread and dips.

In addition to the cake, I had made my favourite vegetarian sausage rolls.  I had also made them late the night before.  They had sagged too much and burst at the seam, perhaps due to tiredness but were fine on the day.  This is a very forgiving recipe!  (Thanks to my sister Fran who made them look so pretty with this photo.  In the hurly burly of the family gathering,

On the other side of the table were some gluten free meaty sausage rolls and a burrata salad, but mostly the sweet baking: scones with jam and cream, hedgehog, profiteroles, rocky road, chocolate peanut butter pretzels.  The nice thing about high tea is that it is more acceptable to have a little savoury and a little sweet and perhaps return to the savoury offerings again.  It is more relaed than a main meal followed by desserts.

Before we started to eat, the joint presents were given to my mum - a photo book, a beautiful Mary Lou Pittard place and a tree for the garden.  We sang happy birthday, my mum blew out the candles, my dad made a speech and my brother played a Christie Moore song.  This was followed by lots of nibbling while everyone chatted and laughed and felt good about being with family.

As I was tipping the batter into the cake tin, I suddenly realised I had not added sugar and asked Sylvia about it.  We both had to check the recipe.  I was relieved to find I was on track.  The cake is just not that sweet.  (I know it is technically a banana bread but it is always a "cake" to me because it is sweet.)  Most cakes seem so sweet that the icing (or glaze) feels unnecessary but in this case it really added to the cake.   Being sweetened only by banana and maple syrup, the cake appeals to those who have not been eating a lot of very sweet food.  

Accolades are also due to the miso who added a slight umami edge to balance the sweetness.  When I gave people a taste, they did not guess there was miso in it but all the banana, maple and miso give it amazing flavour.  

As I mentioned above, Sylvia made the first two versions of this recipe.  In both cases as you can see by the two above photos, we served the glaze alongside the cake and gave the option of adding it instead of spreading it over the top.  This meant that when the cake came out of the oven filling the house with an aroma so amazing that it was too hard to resist eating it warm, we did not have to wait for the cake to cool and be iced.  In addition to this, I liked that when we took slices of cake to an outdoor screening of the Wicked movie, it was easy to transport with the glaze carried separate in a little pot with a spoon.  

It is easy to see why this is our new favourite cake.  We are already talking about making it again.  Easy to make, flexible to present, not too sweet but tasting scrumdeliumptious.  I highly recommend this recipe because it ticks so many boxes and it is so easy to love.

More sweet recipes with miso:

• Helen Goh's Banana with cream cheese icing and miso caramel - The Age Good Food Guide
• Meerha Soda's salted miso brownies (vegan) - Jamie Oliver
• Miso choc chip cookies - a Cozy Kitchen 
• Miso chocolate tart with black sesame chocolate crust - Food and Wine
• Ravinder Bhogal's Banana Cake with Miso Butterscotch & Ovaltine Kulfi - food52
• Semi-soft chocolate dessert cheez (vegan) - One Green Planet

Miso Maple Bread
Slightly adapted from Erin Lives Whole
Makes 1 loaf

Dry ingredients:

• 1 2/3 cups plain wholemeal flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
  
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp salt

 Wet ingredients:

• 3 bananas, mashed (about 1 1/3 cup)
  
• 1/4 cup white miso paste
• 2 eggs
• 1/2 cup neutral oil (I used rice bran oil)
  
• 1/2 cup maple syrup
• 1 tsp vanilla extract

Miso Maple Glaze

• 1 cup icing (powdered) sugar
• 2 tbsp maple syrup
• 1/2 tbsp white miso paste

Grease and line a loaf tin.  Preheat oven to 180 F.  Mix dry ingredients in a small mixing bowl.  Using a fork, mash together the bananas and miso in a large mixing bowl, then add remaining ingredients and lightly whisk together (with a fork is fine).  Fold in the dry ingredients.  Scrap into the prepared tin and bake for 40-45 minutes until a skewer inserted into the middle of the cake comes out clean.  

Miso Maple Glaze: To make the glaze, mix the miso with the maple syrup until creamy.  Add the icing sugar and mix until creamy and spreadable.  If it is too thick, add a little water (I needed 1-2 tsp water).

Serving option 1: Cool cake on a wire rack.  Mix all the glaze ingredients to a creamy texture (add a teaspoon or two of water if it is too thick to spread.  If you make the icing ahead of time, you might need to heat it in the microwave for 10 or 20 seconds to thin it to be spreadable.)  Spread over the cake, cut and serve.  Keeps for 4-5 days in an airtight container.

Serving option 2: If you wish to eat the cake warm out of the oven, let it sit for 5-10 minutes.  Cut into slices and serve them with a spoonful of glaze on each slice.  

Keeps in a airtight container for about 4-5 days.  (Note: keeps better with glaze in a jar and eaten with the cake as in Serving Option 1.)

On the stereo:
The Kick Inside: Kate Bush